Oranje v. Roja

Tablet Magazine is sticking with The Netherlands, although we know there are good arguments for Spain (and not only from a Jewish perspective—here is why aficionados should be pulling for La Furia Roja).

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Department of Genetics, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK.
Abstract

Most studies of European genetic diversity have focused on large-scale variation and interpretations based on events in prehistory, but migrations and invasions in historical times could also have had profound effects on the genetic landscape. The Iberian Peninsula provides a suitable region for examination of the demographic impact of such recent events, because its complex recent history has involved the long-term residence of two very different populations with distinct geographical origins and their own particular cultural and religious characteristics-North African Muslims and Sephardic Jews. To address this issue, we analyzed Y chromosome haplotypes, which provide the necessary phylogeographic resolution, in 1140 males from the Iberian Peninsula and Balearic Islands. Admixture analysis based on binary and Y-STR haplotypes indicates a high mean proportion of ancestry from North African (10.6%) and Sephardic Jewish (19.8%) sources. Despite alternative possible sources for lineages ascribed a Sephardic Jewish origin, these proportions attest to a high level of religious conversion (whether voluntary or enforced), driven by historical episodes of social and religious intolerance, that ultimately led to the integration of descendants.

Dovsays:

July 9, 2010 - 11:56 pm

Oh what nonsense, fw.

Spain is still intolerant towards Jews. In their gays pride parade they didn’t invite Israelis to participate. There are still a bunch of intolerant self righteous inquisitors.

May they lose to the Dutch the way their ancestors lost to them in the 17th century war of liberation!

I am for the Dutch because they took in Jews fleeing the fires of the inquisition.

Jorgesays:

July 10, 2010 - 5:09 pm

shouldn’t that be oranje v rojo?

fwsays:

July 11, 2010 - 12:53 pm

It wasn’t the Spanish government that prohibited Israel from participating in their pride parade; it was the organizers, in a way consistent with how much of the activist segment of the gay community has repudiated Israel. But your point is taken.

Jacobsays:

July 11, 2010 - 8:49 pm

fw says:
“It wasn’t the Spanish government that prohibited Israel from participating in their pride parade; it was the organizers, in a way consistent with how much of the activist segment of the gay community has repudiated Israel. But your point is taken.”

That the gay world finds the Muslim world more appealing than Israel tells me that they have fallen under the spell of antisemitism.

In other words they have gone back to the way they were before WW2. Proust who belonged to that world wrote about it very eloquently.

Many of them will live to regret their choice.

fwsays:

July 12, 2010 - 10:50 am

Yes, Baron Charlus, right? I’ve only read the first 800 pages, or so.

Sadly, I think it’s a reflexive tendency to identify with the left, divide the world into oppressors and the oppressed, and classify the Palestinians as the latter. But it dovetails with classical antisemitism, which feeds it.

Jacobsays:

July 12, 2010 - 1:23 pm

Well said, fw.

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